Today, mapping or tracking ground targets at any location of interest from any remote or distant location is particularly useful for resource mapping, pipeline monitoring, intelligence gathering or supporting disaster response teams. In manned airborne surveillance for resource mapping or ground target identification, the resource mapping activities or search and rescue activities can be costly and restrictive due to limited availability of human pilots that cater to these activities. There are some surveillance systems for resource mapping or ground target identification which can be found which involve unmanned aerial assets.
United States Patent Application 20100269143 discloses a system and method for electronic delivery of command, control information to many land and aerial devices, simultaneously or individually, and transmission of video, audio, location, and other information from devices to user defined entities such as network management centers, and devices over defined geographic areas utilizing inter-connected communications satellites.
European Patent Application EP1318414 describes an Aircraft or spacecraft-borne tomofgraphic synthetic aperture radar method for three-dimensional object image, in which, through coherent combination of a large number of Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR) sensor recordings from different viewing directions, a true three-dimensional image of buildings, urban areas and mountainous areas is obtained and the backscatter contribution of volume objectives the amount to be separated and independently analyzed according to the invention the realization of different visual directions by a set of independently operating and simultaneously operated SAR antenna is achieved.
Aircraft or UAVs used for resource mapping are often controlled individually by ground operators, whereby the operators have to be available to continuously command and control the UAVs. Also, UAVs or satellites used for resource mapping or ground target identification are often operated independently by various ground stations around the world, making it challenging to correlate the imagery data after it has been processed. It is currently difficult to obtain various types of imagery data for a particular location at the same time-stamp. Further, during operations, satellites currently depend on ground stations within its communication antenna's line of sight to receive tasking commands or perform data downlink operations. If a ground station is over-tasked or not within line of sight, the data is stored on-board until a suitable connection with a ground station can be established. As a result, there are often delays in receiving raw imagery data at a remote ground station, followed by additional delays involved in transferring the data from the remote ground station to the mission control centre for data processing. UAVs need to be constantly in communication range with a ground station or terminal during operations, which means that its operational flight path is restricted by the ground station location.
Thus, there has been a need for a ground target mapping and tracking system which can autonomously perform mapping and tracking operation at any location around the world without being restricted by remote ground terminals or stations and able to generate or process image data products obtained from the ground target locations and display them to users at the ground stations in near real-time.